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User blog:Technobliterator/Why Data Organization is Important for Gaming Wikis
Hey, I’m Technobliterator from . Today I’m here to talk about why convenient access to information is important for games. When playing a game, there’s often a very strong desire to have a guide available for that game, or to be able to quickly look up a fact that’s needed. Whether it’s a strategy for a boss battle, the cost of a rare item, or the unlock conditions for an achievement, it’s likely that anyone playing will want to find out facts immediately rather than having to memorize it. As the technology on which people play games advances rapidly, so too has the technology to look up these facts that people will need on the fly. This is why portability is so important. Wikis have proven to be a fantastic resource for many gamers because of how easily they can access the data they need; as they begin to access that data from many different form factors, it’s important that wikis keep up. Different ways of playing games Gaming has changed a lot over the course of its existence. We’ve seen arcade games, console games, handheld console games, PC games, and smartphone games. What comes next are possible breakthroughs in VR games, in cloud gaming, in gaming on smart TVs, and on all other different form factors. And it’s changing rapidly. It’s hard to tell, for instance, if consoles will even be around after a few years, or if any gamer will need anything other than the internet to play games when cloud gaming really takes off. It’s very hard to predict where gaming is headed, given how much it’s changed just within these past decades. The internet has made playing games much more convenient, now that they no longer need to buy a game guide book to learn each obscure detail, as the internet is their game guide. But that online game guide needs to be accessed as easily as a guide book. What we know for certain is that on all these different form factors, there are different needs. In a scenario, let’s imagine a game released on all platforms with one impossibly hard mission that players need information to complete. Anyone playing a game on PC likely only needs to tab out to find out how to win. If they’re playing it on a PS4, then it’ll be less convenient for them to look up on a PC (which may be several rooms away or may need booting up). Since console controllers aren’t ideal for browsing, they’re more likely to use a phone or tablet to find out the best way to pass the mission. If they’re playing on a console but with a VR headset, then they’re much less likely to want to take the headset off to use a phone or tablet, and then it becomes more convenient to use the PS4 web browser. Different ways of looking up data The internet has also changed a lot, too. There was a time when we could very reasonably assume anyone using the internet was accessing it through a desktop computer or a laptop. Now, it’s more commonly accessed through a phone, with tablets also making up a sizeable amount of traffic. All of these things provide different convenient options for players. They may not need to access data just while playing the game, they may want to read up strategies or look up details while doing something else, or while preparing to play a game later. These cases are just as important for our online game guides. Accommodating for all of them Portability aims to fix all of these issues for gamers. By creating a web design that is responsive and works for all form factors, that loads easily with a decent internet, and that is fun to use, it is possible to make wikis that serve as the best possible online game guide for players. Games will often require lots of statistical data and information to be input and displayed properly. By making that data work on all platforms, we make it far more convenient, and serve people much better. Creating content that is future proof also allows us to easily tackle and new platform that the rapidly changing world of gaming and the internet throw at us, so we are prepared to serve new types of users in many different ways as well. Category:Blog posts